Note: This is a seattlepi.com reader blog. It is not written or edited by the P-I. The authors are solely responsible for content. E-mail us at newmedia@seattlepi.com if you consider a post inappropriate.

Remembering the South Precinct

Yesterday, as the news from Rattlesnake Lake developed, as the story of Officer Richard Nelson spread in the immediacy of our instantaneous news cycle, I watched the comments posted on the online stories. Too often, they were loud opinions from mostly anonymous people with a gripe about the Seattle Police Department. Still, Rainier Valley Post editor Amber Campbell handled the news as the responsible community journalist she is, and as the full tragedy dawned, the Seattle Times wisely removed all the comments to their coverage.

Over the years, I’ve worked in the Jungle with many officers who knew Officer Nelson. Here, in Seattle’s South End, many of us citizens are once removed from Thursday’s events. With the evening news, I flitted between KOMO, KIRO, and KING, seeing police I’ve met step from Harborview after keeping watch over their colleague, their emotional honesty veiled just behind professional decorum.

As I learned of Officer Nelson’s death, the emotion of surviving others’ suicides rose in my physical memory. It grips your eyes, your jaw, your shoulders, your gut. In 2007, a friend of mine with stage 4 breast cancer was killed by her husband in a suicide pact, along with their 5-year-old daughter. I would ask myself the questions that the men and women who knew Richard Nelson may be asking themselves now. All the what ifs boil down to, “What could I have done to help?”

It is both a fair question and an unfair question, fair because we care and believe we can help each other out, unfair as it opens a broad door to shock, guilt, and anger.

For some, death by one’s own hand is a way out of misery. Another friend of mine who suffered from type C hepatitis wasted away from a strapping Norwegian like me to a wraith of his former self. When he took his own life, he probably weighed 90 pounds at six feet tall.

For both of my friends, their passing was hard on those who survived them, especially hard on those who found them. Their actions were a final call for help, and though that call recedes in memory, it is ever present, rising when another so goes.

Still, with time, solace forms. We turn to those we love, perhaps art, the stillness beside a stream or the rush of a seaborne wind. Samuel Barber’s Adagio in Strings and Aaron Copeland’s Quiet City are not far away.

Last night was restless. I would awake and begin writing this piece in my mind, my wife asleep down the hall, our latest cat quizzically looking at me before curling up into her small, good peace.

This morning, I took a card of condolence by the precinct, and dropped it off at the front desk. When I explained my purpose, the sergeant on duty became for a moment just another person, who took the card, shook my hand, and thanked me.

No matter what led to yesterday’s events, the officers of the South Precinct have stood by our community, doing a difficult job in difficult times. Perhaps a card is a small gesture, yet when those we know are grieving, no matter how tough and professional a face they must turn to the public, small gestures can show we stand by them in this hour.

Consider some touch of understanding to let these men and women know we are there for them, too.

Note: This is a seattlepi.com reader blog. It is not written or edited by the P-I. The authors are solely responsible for content. E-mail us at newmedia@seattlepi.com if you consider a post inappropriate.